Pet insurance reviews

01
.Introduction

Is pet insurance worth it? Which pet insurers provide the best value for money? We review over 50 pet insurance policies in Australia for cats and dogs - priced from $150 to over $1300 a year - that protect your pet from accidents and illness, or provide cover for routine care.

Your pets are part of your family, but don’t expect their health insurance to be as generous as it is with human family members. Our buying guide answers the questions:

CHOICE bites pet insurers

Distraught pet owner Robyn Bersten told CHOICE she was forced to pay premiums for the remainder of the policy period on her Medibank Private pet insurance, even though her dog Beau had died.

It would be pretty outrageous if you had to keep paying premiums on your relative’s health insurance after they died. But in a turn of events, Medibank has now agreed to refund Robyn's premiums and Petsure, the policy administrator, has announced they will cease the practice of charging consumers premiums for their deceased pets from July 1 2014.

Review criteria

Scores

The overall score is made up of coverage for events, waiting periods and recurring conditions (33%), policy co-payments (33%) and annual benefits (33%). A score is also provided for routine care where applicable but this is not added to the overall score.

Premiums

Premiums are usually dependent on the age, species and breed. We’ve given indicative prices for a couple of three- and eight-year-old pets in our comparative tables, but check with the insurer for the latest quote for your pet.

Claim satisfaction

Statistics for the number of disputes forwarded to the Financial Ombudsman Service are shown but these are not added to the overall score.

The insurers

The following brands were included in our pet insurance comparison:

1300insurance

AFS-PetMed

Bow Wow Meow

Guardian Insurance

Guide Dogs Australia

HCF Pet Insurance

Insuranceline

Medibank Pet Insurance

Pet Insurance Australia

Petinsurance.com.au

Petsecure

Prime Pet Insurance

PROSURE

Real Pet Insurance

RSPCA

Woolworths Pet Insurance

Petplan - Please note that due to a lack of publicly available information about co-payment requirements, the Petplan Classic and Ultimate policies are not available in our comparison tables.